The Invisible Child: Providing Support to Chronically Ill Siblings From a Distance

When a child is hospitalized due to illness or injury the entire family is affected including the patient’s siblings. This hospital implemented a sibling program for siblings of chronically ill patients to promote increased sibling engagement, parent education, and sibling presence to optimize sibling coping from afar.

Suggested Domain: Intervention

1.5 PDUs

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will be able to summarize relevant research regarding sibling outcomes of a chronically ill patient and identify evidence-based practices that can be protective mechanisms to adverse sibling reactions.

2. Participants will be able to replicate and adapt interventions this hospital has been found beneficial to increase sibling engagement.

3. Participants will be able to identify and apply techniques to improve parents perceived benefits of sibling support and engagement of sibling adjustment techniques.

4. Participants will be able to advocate for the need and benefits of sibling support to the multi-disciplinary team.

5. Participants will be able to identify practical ways to utilize volunteers to decrease workload of Child Life specialists managing a clinical unit and sibling support.

Thank you to our generous sponsor of this webinar, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for helping to provide this webinar programming for child life specialists.